Blame the corporate management, not developers.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/top...?page=106#2104 Like the RMAH thing was a choice. It wasnt a choice, they had to do it because Blizzard has been since the merge part of big company which has stocks and people who buy their stocks expect them to rise in value. They have to think every posible way to make money. Obviously that means that general player is on the losing side, but it's just stupid when people blame developers, when in fact it's the management's fault they merged with Activision and now every fucking thing they do is almost all about money. Blame the corporate people, not developers.

Activision has no input into the development of Diablo 3. Like all parent companies, it requests that it operates within a set of paramaters, and the development team at Blizzard can do what they want within those paramaters.

People have no idea how parent companies work, so I want to end this here and now; This is not how corporations work, this is not how Blizzard or Activision works. Anything done on Diablo 3 is purely from the development team / Blizzard. Activision would have zero say in its development.

What does that post have to do with the RMAH? Do you know how many people use it? Is anyone forced to use it? If it is all about the money, then making a bad game that SCREWS the community actually HURTS money making. By your logic, if it is all about money, then making GREAT games will bring in MORE money. I don't get your logic.

And in addition you imply Blizzard never was about making money before the merger?

Seriously?

"It’s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need."

Are you sure about that? Because in wow there wasnt any mounts or other items you could buy with real money, but instantly after the merge those kind of items appeared in store. Also game quality dropped shitload.

What does that post have to do with the RMAH? Do you know how many people use it? Is anyone forced to use it? If it is all about the money, then making a bad game that SCREWS the community actually HURTS money making. By your logic, if it is all about money, then making GREAT games will bring in MORE money. I don't get your logic.

And in addition you imply Blizzard never was about making money before the merger?

Are you sure about that? Because in wow there wasnt any mounts or other items you could buy with real money, but instantly after the merge those kind of items appeared in store. Also game quality dropped shitload.

There is no evidence to back up this claim. Again, you've got no knowledge of corporate business or how the business world works. Making wild claims is one thing, but to blame another company, because you're unhappy with Blizzard is not the right way to go about this.

I'll say it again, so we're all on the same page; Activision has had zero say in how World of Warcraft, Starcraft or Diablo is developed. I recall a post by Ghostcrawler explaining that in the last few years, they've only ever met a few times to present the latest stuff to Activision, but how they have no input or influence on the development.

Are you sure about that? Because in wow there wasnt any mounts or other items you could buy with real money, but instantly after the merge those kind of items appeared in store. Also game quality dropped shitload.

Vivendi actually bought a majority stake in Activision. Activision and Blizzard are owned by the same company and that is how the merger came about. It wasn't like it was a hostile takeover by Activision like you're implying.

Vivendi actually bought a majority stake in Activision. Activision and Blizzard are owned by the same company and that is how the merger came about. It wasn't like it was a hostile takeover by Activision like you're implying.

The RMAH was absolutely a choice. A choice by Blizzard's management and developers. If you think some evil board member of Activision or Vivendi (or some other company not named Blizzard) is the reason D3 turned out the way it did, you are completely wrong.

Not this crap again.... how many times does it have to be said. Make better games and you will get more money, so why would quality suffer when a company is trying to get more money? Checkmate, as usual.

My God, what a horrible creation. People seeing what they want? Thank God they tried to shy away from that. I know it pisses me off when I'm in an heroic raid, yet in the back of my head all I can think is 'some casual player is playing a heroic dungeon and not wiping.' -Vodkarn

Why would the merger of Vivendi Games and Activision make Blizzard more greedy? They were a part of Vivendi since 98, they always wanted to explore more ways with making money, hence why WoW has a sub base, there is the store and D3 has the RMAH.

SC2 on the other hand has nothing like that, you buy the game you play it, no additional fees.

And it's not like we have seen DLC's or they stopped supporting WC3, D2 servers just because it doesn't generate any income.

Are you sure about that? Because in wow there wasnt any mounts or other items you could buy with real money, but instantly after the merge those kind of items appeared in store. Also game quality dropped shitload.

Its pretty obvious that Blizzard took lessons from Activision in regards to "how do we produce something with as little effort while making as much money as possible"
That was the point of the merger. Activision probably has some of the best financial minds in the industry, while Blizz has (or rather, had) some of the best devs and most profitable IPs. Activision couldnt possibly give their competitors tips, so they just merged.

Not this crap again.... how many times does it have to be said. Make better games and you will get more money, so why would quality suffer when a company is trying to get more money? Checkmate, as usual.

I can answer this one:

Because, somewhere along the path of history, the definition of what a company is has changed. Ask anybody what a company is for, and they'll say "to make money."

It's not that... the original purpose of a company is to "Make a quality product in exchange for money". Companies have gotten so large that they look at ridiculous statistics instead of quality.

I used to be the Senior Art Director for a successful gaming magazine, and I'll never forget the one issue where I created the cover to showcase a semi-naked Lara Croft on the cover. The Marketing head kept telling me to "change the purple background... purple doesn't sell". So, changed all the colors of the rainbow to appease her, but we FINALLY convinced her to go with the purple back... with her saying "Don't blame me if it doesn't sell".

Well, it sold DAMN well - was the best selling issue we ever had.

She ran up to me after the sales came through and said "Do you know what sold that issue!?" I responded "the semi-naked Lara Croft?"... she said "...the PURPLE!! We were the ONLY ones to have PURPLE on the cover! NOBODY ELSE HAD IT!"

...years later I was told this story about her to another fellow Art Director and he said "Wow! I was always wondering why she kept insisting on putting something purple on the cover!"

Seriously Vongimi, you are absolutely correct - but NO COMPANIES focus on that today. Marketing looks at statistics, not gameplay quality. They do not understand that concept as it is not quantifiable or measurable.

Isn't it immature that you call him Donald "Dump"?
I agree, it's childish and stupid - and that's my point. it's meant as a deliberate mockery of his blatant disrespect via using "Crooked Hillary", and thus I can call him "Dump" since he dumps his campaign promises, dumps campaign managers, dumps his wives, wants to dump the first amendment, dumps common-sense war ethics and dumps the use of proper English in favor of a mongrel white-trash dialect.

Blizzard was very much in one line on strategic level and level of principles prior the merger with Activision. Both companies had similar visions and ideas. There was a frequent exchange of both before the actual merger happened. This is nothing unusual at all and is typical for companies whose merger has been acknowledged by legal authorities. Seen this myself in the case of the company I am working for.
This corruption which people are seeing as a result of this is one literally nothing but the result of strategic cooperation and not necessarily the worst of it. Blizzard before the merger was always about to make that leap but lacked experience and willpower to go through years of iteration which may have ended in the same or even worse way. Their partnership allowed them to take shortcuts while trading experience in product-oriented and community-oriented public relations management in return.
Blizzard literally was never short of ideas to monetize and they capitalized on services when sales didn't cover it. Since partnering with Activision they finally had the backup to monetize on virtual goods via microtransactions as well. A lot of people were speculating even through lengthy and elaborate posts how Activision influenced design-decisions on Blizzard side. Well, in a way it is correct, by finally getting to monetize the most controversial decisions made by Blizzard were around two things: monetization and social media integration and management (see Battle.Net 2.0) however: it is what they always wanted to do and not what they wanted to avoid.

However Blizzard during the recent years in my opinion has put too much weight on these issues and less on the things which brought them into the light in first place: Combining productive innovation with polish which in turn made their games becoming referential beacons when it came to direction of the genres they dominated in. Nowadays they appear to become one of the crowd where they often have to take lessons from others instead of giving them. If it weren't for SC2's dominance in the RTS market (although at a time where MOBAs are much more popular) and WoW's longevity they would be pretty much on average level. Their sales numbers may still tell a different story but Blizzard has built up that much of a momentum to allow for creative slump periods with extensive community fallout. Hopefully they will get out of it within the next two years.